


slow march

by waveridden



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Boston Flowers (Blaseball Team), F/M, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 05, Unlimited Tacos (Blaseball Team), alternate lore where post-alternate reality decree Dunn is a pop star/mascot for Dunkin Donuts, liberal use of the IRM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29906796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveridden/pseuds/waveridden
Summary: “Fresh from a parallel reality,” Dunn says, as cheerily as she can. It comes out a little plastic, a little bit too pop star, and she has to force herself to reel it in. “Although I guess every team had some changes. I have it on good authority I used to be a robot.”Dunn Keyes, Basilio Mason, infinite realities, and what's in a name.
Relationships: Dunn Keyes/Basilio Mason
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	slow march

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, I made a joke about Dunn Keyes being Dunkin' Donuts Aria Joie, and then got WILDLY attached to the idea. If you're not familiar with Counter/WEIGHT, Aria Joie is a pop star/mascot for a hypercapitalistic theme park. That was my starting point for Dunn - think Flo from the Progressive commercials by way of Disney Channel teen stars.
> 
> CWs for descriptions of unreality (Los Angeli), blaseball horror (the Wyatt Masoning), and alcohol use (everyone is of age).

Dunn is sitting in the dugout, not thinking about anything in particular, when she realizes that Moses is talking about her.

She can’t hear the conversation, but she can tell. It’s the kind of thing that comes with being a celebrity, a sort of sixth sense for being observed. Dunn has had a long time to tell when people are talking about her.

She used to get stopped in the grocery store when people recognized her. They’d ask her to sing for them, and she was contractually obligated to smile and sing as if they weren’t standing in the canned vegetable aisle. After that happened a dozen times she’d started getting her groceries delivered, the first step down a path towards never going in public anymore.

Anyways.

Most of the Flowers are talking to the Tacos, doing the typical post-game chit-chat. Even the bugs and plants are talking to a palm tree person. Dunn’s the only one sitting off to the side, waiting in the dugout, watching.

But Moses is talking about her, with someone on the Tacos. He’s a pretty guy, admittedly. Instead of a jersey he’s wearing a silk shirt in Tacos team colors, and his hair is in forest green cornrows patterned in an elaborate lattice. They’re both not quite looking at her, the way that people do when they’re definitely talking about her.

She considers getting up to ask them about it. But the game just ended, and she was barely paying attention, so she doesn’t know what kind of conversation she would have. Instead she crosses her legs and checks her phone — nothing new, because surprisingly enough getting kicked to an alternate reality tends to cramp your social life — and waits.

Dunn’s expecting Moses to make some kind of introduction. She’s not expecting the other guy to plop down next to her and say, “You want a shopping buddy?”

She blinks. “What?”

“Shopping,” he repeats. “I probably know the shopping scene in Boston better than you do. And better than your team.”

“One of my teammates is bees, so the fashion bar is pretty low,” Dunn says without thinking. The guy grins at her. “What’s in it for you?”

“A new friend.” He holds out a hand. “Basilio Mason, at your service.”

“Dunn Keyes.” She shakes his hand and pauses. “Are you and Moses related?”

It’s only because she’s watching closely that she notices his smile go tight around the edges. “No,” he says shortly, and Dunn makes a mental note not to ask again. “You’re new here, right?”

“Fresh from a parallel reality,” she says, as cheerily as she can. It comes out a little plastic, a little bit too pop star, and she has to force herself to reel it in. “Although I guess every team had some changes.”

“You’re telling me.” Basilio points at a horse. “That used to be a human being.”

Dunn blinks, hard. “I have it on good authority I used to be a robot.”

“Her hair wasn’t as good as yours,” Basilio deadpans, and Dunn cracks a smile. “Shopping?”

Well, hell. It’s not like she has plans. “Sure,” she says. “Why not?”

  
  


#

  
  


When Dunn had moved from Boston to Hollywood at the ripe old age of sixteen, her mother had been worried.

She hadn’t understood, because she was sixteen and therefore knew with certainty that she was making a good choice. She had been a good singer since she was a kid, the kind of good that meant that she won elementary school talent shows and had gone to a performing arts high school.

She had been a good singer, in a way that meant she attracted attention. A talent agent had approached her one day, after a performance showcase, and said that the company they represented was looking for a singer to use in advertisements, and would she consider auditioning? So she had auditioned, and then she found out the company was Dunkin’ Donuts, and then she had gotten the part.

She hates to think about it now, but she had been so young and so sure of herself, more sure than she’s capable of being now. She hadn’t hesitated. When they asked her to move from Boston to Hollywood, she was gone by the end of the week.

She wishes she had let her mother fuss more. Her mother so rarely fussed, even when Dunn insisted on getting scholarships to go to better schools than she could afford to go to. But she fussed about sending her daughter across the country.

“I just wonder,” her mother had said, the night before she left, “I wonder, when you’re by yourself and you need someone, will you have someone’s door to knock on?”

“That’s what agents are for,” she had answered patiently. Incorrectly, not that she’d known it at the time.

On her seventeenth birthday, Dunkin’ had revealed their new spokesperson: Dunn Keyes, a peppy, upbeat singer who just  _ loved _ their coffee. It was a record contract, even if she was singing about macchiatos and bagels most of the time, so she had gritted her teeth and bore it.

They’d been kind, as far as corporate overlords go. They let her record commercials where she spoke Spanish, and talk about her family in Puerto Rico. They let her come out as bisexual. For the longest time they seemed to care about her — not Dunn Keyes the superstar, but the teenager who paid her way through performing arts school with a newspaper route.

So it was worth it, she reminded herself, to be in the public eye. It was worth it to get to sing. It was worth losing the ability to go to the grocery store, it was worth her whole wardrobe being pink and orange, it was worth moving away from her family and never visiting Boston outside of concert tours. It was worth losing her name. They had her legally change it, eventually, and she let it happen.

She gritted her teeth and bore it for nine years.

Dunn hadn’t had doors to knock on, in the end. When she tried to get out of her contract, she had found herself suddenly and absolutely friendless. Nobody in Hollywood wanted to risk their precarious social standing just to help her. She was suddenly trapped, a superstar in plastic, unable to push her way out into something real.

It had been a relief the day she woke up and wasn’t in her bedroom. It had been a relief when Beck Whitney had explained, haltingly, that she was in a new reality, and she had replaced another person named Dunn Keyes. It hadn’t even been hard to hear about incinerations, or the Flowers’ alleged curse. She was just relieved that she didn’t have to sing anymore.

At least, she was relieved until she tried to throw a ball for the first time.

Dunn was not out of shape. She did concert tours. She had a personal trainer. She could dance. But none of those skills were translatable to pitching blaseballs, especially when they didn’t have blaseball in her reality.

And this would be fine, it would be manageable, but then she learned about the Dunn who had started in this reality, who had presumably replaced her. That Dunn was the star pitcher of the team. This Dunn couldn’t do a goddamn thing.

The Flowers were nothing but generous. Beck loaned her clothes. Zeb started doing one-on-one pitching practices with her, teaching her simple stretches, warm-ups and cool-downs. Margarito and Owen even took her on a series of tours of Boston, helping her settle in.

They’ve all been perfectly nice to her. Dunn wishes that someone would just scream at her and get it over with. God knows she wants to scream back.

  
  


#

  
  


Basilio is, thank god, more fashionable than everyone else on the team. He’s so high-fashion that the first three places he takes her don’t have price tags.

“I’m going to max out my credit cards,” Dunn says, looking at her reflection in a dressing room mirror. She’s still gravitating towards pink and orange, a habit that’s impossible to break, but at least she can pick darker shades now. More sunset than bubblegum.

Basilio leans over her shoulder, catching her eye in the mirror. “No you’re not.”

“Why’s that?”

“You get paid to play,” he says, which gives her pause. She hasn’t looked at her finances at all. “Also, I’m paying.”

Dunn swats at his arm. “You’re absolutely not.”

“My treat.”

“Why?”

Basilio looks at her for a long moment, considering. At last he says, “My parents own a fashion line. One of the biggest in the world.”

She blinks. “Okay? What about it?”

“Moses told me you used to be famous.”

“Not anymore.”

“I’m not anymore either.” He pauses. “I mean, I am. But I have a new name now. And I like that you didn’t ask about my name, and I think that dress looks good on you and it would be a damn shame to let something like money stand in the way.”

“One new formal dress isn’t exactly a shopping haul for the ages,” Dunn says dryly.

Basilio shrugs. “I’ll get you this and we’ll hit a Mlacy’s afterwards.”

“Do you mean Macy’s?”

“I’ve never heard of Macy’s.”

Dunn shakes her head. “Alternate reality.”

“Alternate reality,” he agrees. “Let me show you around?”

Dunn watches him for a long moment. She thinks, sometimes, that she’s jaded, that she can’t trust anyone after being in show business. But Basilio’s smiling at her, looking a little expectant. Not like he thinks she’s going to agree, not in a sleazy show business way. But like he wants her to say yes.

“Fine,” she says at last. “But I’m paying for dinner, it’s only fair.”

“We can get fast food, for the sake of your wallet,” Basilio says, and when Dunn laughs she’s surprised by how much she means it.

  
  


#

  
  


Dunn has a list in her phone. It was Beck’s idea, the “What’d I Miss?” List, although Dunn prefers to call it her what-the-fuck list. It’s a simple, incredibly long list of things that she doesn’t understand about this reality.

A lot of it is pretty mild. Boston here is strange and interdimensional, so she doesn’t recognize street corners. Things like Mlacy’s and Whlataburger. Even people who she half-knew in her reality who play blaseball here, names that she hears in passing and recognizes.

Absolutely none of this, of course, prepares her for when Beck pulls her aside to say, “Our next series is in Los Angeli.”

“You mean Los Angeles,” Dunn says, because there’s absolutely no way this is happening. Geography seems to generally be the same here.

Beck shakes her head. “Los Angeli,” she repeats. “I’m warning you right now, you’re going to get headaches. Talk to Moses, they’ll have advice.”

“Why Los Angeli?”

“Because of the Masoning,” Beck says, like it’s obvious. Dunn stares for a second longer, and Beck visibly pauses. “You don’t know about the Masoning.”

“I don’t know about anything,” Dunn says, gratingly patient. “What’s the Masoning?”

Beck grimaces. “A while ago there was an… incident, which ended up breaking reality for a little while. Instead of being one city, Los Angeles is now an infinite series of Los Angeli, and all of the Tacos were named Wyatt Mason.”

“All of them?”

“All of them. And they all got at least part of their names back, but—”

“Oh my god,” Dunn says suddenly. “Oh my god, I asked Basilio if he and Moses were related.”

Beck brightens. “You talked to Basilio?” she says. It’s encouraging to the point of being saccharine. Beck is a pretty good captain, but sometimes she gets like… this, like she’s trying to mother Dunn, and it’s a little much.

“We went shopping last time the Tacos played us,” Dunn answers. It’s an incomplete answer, not that Beck will ever know it. They’d gone shopping after the first game in the series, and gone to the movies after the second. And after the third, a game that Dunn had pitched and lost miserably, he took her to the Boston Museum of Science, and they’d sat in the planetarium show.

“Good,” Beck says. She seems surprised, but when she smiles it’s as warm as ever. “Good! I’m glad you’re making friends on other teams, it’s life-saving. All the other captains and I have a group chat.”

“What do you talk about?” Dunn asks, more to be polite than anything.

Beck shrugs. “Strategy. Scheduling. When we can hang out outside of games.” She pauses for a second and then adds, “How fucking annoying it is playing in Los Angeli and the Hellmouth."

Dunn stares for a second, too dumbstruck by Beck Whitney cursing to respond. Beck must be able to tell, because she winks. “Captains gotta have fun too. Go ask Moses about migraines and advice, they’ll know what to do.”

“Thanks,” Dunn says, and turns to leave. She takes out her phone as she does and opens her what-the-fuck list and adds, just for fun:  _ Beck Whitney might actually be cool. _

And then, well. Her phone’s already out. So she texts Basilio:  _ against you next. see you tomorrow? _

It’s only a matter of seconds before her phone lights up with a string of emojis, and then he’s off asking about food allergies and restaurants and tourism. Dunn grins at her phone. This is going to be fun.

  
  


#

  
  


She forgets about the migraine meds until the day before. Or, okay, she forgets about them until Moses all but corners her after their last game in Boston and hands her a pill bottle. “You’re going to need these.”

“Thanks,” Dunn says, surprised. “Uh—”

“Los Angeli aren’t as scary as it sounds,” Moses continues. “It takes some getting used to, because it’s a lot of cities layered on top of each other, but it’s navigable.”

What Dunn should say is thank you. She should end the conversation. But for some stupid reason, what she blurts out is, “Do you think my reality will be there?”

Moses pauses and looks her up and down. She’s only talked to them a couple times, but she knows that they used to be an actor too, a particular brand of celebrity that she knows well. They seem down-to-earth, though, and when they look at her it doesn’t feel like a sleazy Hollywood look. It feels like a colleague, or something.

“Maybe,” they say, after a pause. “I wouldn’t count on it, though, and you probably couldn’t stay even if you tried to—”

“Stay?” Dunn laughs, but it sounds shrill even to herself. “No, I’m not going back there. They can’t take me back there.”

“Okay.” Moses reaches out and grabs Dunn’s hand, closing her fingers around the pill bottle. “Hey. Look at me?”

She does, and Moses smiles. “Hollywood sucks,” they say.

“Hollywood sucks,” Dunn agrees. “I was sixteen when I moved there.”

“I was nineteen, but I was there for a long time. There are good people there, but it was hard.”

“It was hard,” she echoes.

“But,” Moses says, and squeezes her hand so she looks up at them. “But. You’re on the team now. We’re there for three days, and then we’re somewhere else, okay? Your problem isn’t going to be Hollywood, it’s going to be not getting lost. Don’t go anywhere by yourself.”

“Basilio said he’d show me around,” Dunn says automatically.

“Basilio likes you,” Moses agrees, which — wow, Hollywood panic cancelled, she has to know what the hell  _ that’s _ about. But Moses doesn’t elaborate. “Hang out with him, or the Flowers, or something. You’re going to be fine.”

“Okay,” Dunn says. And then, because she’s apparently still having a freak-out moment, she says, “What was his name before?”

“Basilio Preston.” Moses pauses. “Names are… complicated, Dunn.”

“I know.”

“Mine used to be the same as Chambers’s.”

Dunn frowns. “You mean—”

“He’s my dad. Family’s complicated. But—” Moses sighs. “The Masoning was hard, and so was the Unmasoning. But I like that I have something that ties me to the team I started on. I don’t think Basilio feels the same way.”

She nods, and despite herself she can still see the tight-eyed smile he’d given when she asked about him and Moses. “Thank you. For answering my questions, and the meds.”

“Nobody’s going to judge you for being nauseous,” Moses adds. “So don’t try to hide it if you feel sick, because that’s going to cause more problems than you being honest.”

“I won’t.”

“And keep your phone charged.”

“Moses—”

“And use the buddy system.”

“Thanks, Moses,” Dunn says, more obnoxious than strictly necessary. It’s not until they crack a smile that she realizes they were definitely, definitely messing with her on purpose, and she rolls her eyes. “I’m not a kindergartener. I know that if I get lost I just hug a tree and call Beck.”

Moses laughs. “Got it in one.”

  
  


#

  
  


The migraine meds turn out to be critically important, because no amount of explaining could have prepared Dunn for Los Angeli, buildings mapped over each other, cars from one reality flickering into another just long enough that it makes it hard to cross the street. She lives on Excedrin, Advil, and adrenaline, less because she wants to and more out of necessity.

Basilio, though, Basilio seems completely at home. He gives her advice about crosswalks and coffee shops and then he shows her how to go from place to place. He can see some kind of order over the chaos, and what’s more he can make sure Dunn sees it too.

She’s not pitching, which means that she sits in the Tacos’ dugout during games and talks to him. He tells her stories about fashion shows, and about Moses. The rest of the Tacos move around her, greet her like any other Flower, but Basilio—

Dunn tries not to think about her family. She hadn’t been close with her siblings, hadn’t seen them in the couple of years following her mother’s funeral. She tries not to think about her mother at all.

But she remembers her mother saying that she’d need doors to knock on, friendly faces in case she needed something. And Dunn knows that she could knock on Beck’s door, or Moses’s or Margo’s, but there’s something special to this: to sitting in the dugout with Basilio, and deciding that she’d let him call her if he needed anything, too.

  
  


#

  
  


The Tacos win the first game, so Dunn celebrates by buying dinner at a Thai place that she half-recognizes from her Los Angeles. The Tacos win the second game, so Basilio celebrates by taking Dunn to a roller rink. And then the Tacos complete the sweep, and Basilio says, “I want to go out drinking.”

The two of them end up at a little karaoke bar that neither of them recognize. He drinks cocktails and she drinks beer and they watch strangers sing and talk about their teams.

“Do you still sing?” Basilio asks, towards the end of the night.

Dunn thinks about stadium tours and grocery stores. “Not anymore,” she admits.

“Do you miss it?”

“I miss when it was fun.”

Basilio nods. “I hope it can be fun again one day,” he says, and it’s so sincere and she’s so close to drunk that she can feel her throat close up. “It’s getting late, can I walk you back to the hotel?”

Dunn nods, and insists on paying the tab, and the two of them head off together. The hotel isn’t that far, and even closer with a couple shortcuts that Basilio knows. It’s only a handful of minutes before they’re standing outside the little hotel that all the Flowers are staying in.

Dunn has been afforded the luxury of a single hotel room, a gesture of goodwill from Beck to help her settle in by herself. It’s temporary, she knows, but she appreciates it. She appreciates it tonight because it means she has the courage to say, “Do you want to stay the night? It’s late.”

“I’d love to,” Basilio says, and she leads him to her room.

They end up on the floor together — god only knows why, Dunn doesn’t particularly like it, but at least they’re together, warm and tipsy. He puts Food Nletwork on, and asks about every celebrity chef, and Dunn tells him all the differences between what she remembers and what she’s seeing.

“The names are different here,” she says at one point, and remembers too late what Moses said about names. “I mean, not that it makes a difference, but—”

“Names make a difference,” Basilio says. It doesn’t sound angry, or tight, or anything like that. He turns to face her, shoulder bumping against hers. “I’m guessing Moses mentioned the Wyatt Masoning.”

“Yeah,” Dunn admits. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Basilio shrugs. “Blaseball took my name,” he says, matter of fact. “I remember it. I know what it was. But I can’t say it out loud. None of us can say who we used to be.”

Dunn snorts before she can think better of it. “I know the feeling,” she mutters.

Basilio tilts his head. “Your name isn’t Dunn Keyes?”

She hasn’t said her name out loud in years. It was a contract violation, something she discovered far too late. They took everything from her, scrubbed her name from the internet, made it harder to go home. She doesn’t think she’s even said it out loud in this dimension yet.

She takes a deep breath. “My name is Dulcinea Alondra Maria Quiñones. But my siblings used to call me Cindy, when we were really little.”

Basilio smiles, eyes warm. “Dulcinea,” he repeats. “Dulcinea Alon— Alondra?”

“Alondra Maria Quiñones,” she repeats. “In the beginning they said that Dunn Keyes was a nickname, and then they changed it, and it was my name, period.”

“Dulcinea,” Basilio says. He’s looking at her intensely, and she finds herself looking back, watching the way his mouth moves around the shape of her name. “Dulcinea. Cindy? Do you like Cindy?”

She shakes her head. “It makes me sad,” she admits.

“Dulcie?”

“Nobody’s ever called me Dulcie.”

“Dulcie,” Basilio repeats, satisfied. “Dulcie Quiñones.”

“Basilio—” she pauses. “Moses told me. I can say it, if you want me to.”

Basilio goes quiet for a second. “No,” he says at last. “No, I think that’d make me sad too.”

Dunn pauses, racking her brain. “Baz,” she suggests. “It’d be posh.”

He laughs. “You think I’m posh?”

She pokes at his shirt. “How much did this cost? And if the answer is more than three digits, you’re posh.”

“Point taken.” He smiles. “Dulcie and Baz.”

“Baz and Dulcie.” She leans her head on his shoulder, bits of pink and orange hair falling in her face. He sweeps her bangs out of her eyes, a motion so careful that it makes her stomach flutter.

She forces herself to take a deep breath. Her last girlfriend was three years ago, but her last best friend was longer than that. She’d rather have a best friend than a boyfriend, at least for now.

“Baz and Dulcie,” she says again. “I don’t want to sleep on the floor.”

“Then get up.”

“You get up.”

“You’re lying on me, Dulcie.”

Dunn smiles at the nickname, can’t help herself. “That sounds like your problem, Baz,” she drawls, and she’s gratified to hear a quiet snort.

The hotel room flickers around them from time to time, going from one bed to two, grey paint to taupe to blue, indoors to outdoors, changes that Dunn can’t even process. But Baz’s shoulder under her head doesn’t move. Not even when she closes her eyes. Not even when they fall asleep like that, backs pressed against the hotel bed, leaning on each other.

  
  


#

  
  


Her alarm goes off ungodly early, because they have to be in Kansas City for the next game. Basilio sleeps through it, lucky bastard, so Dunn carefully slides away and starts going through the room to unpack.

It’s not a conscious thing, when she starts humming. She’s not even sure what the song is, one part improvised and one part stolen from other songs she’s heard. It’s a meandering, tuneless thing, but she sings under her breath as she packs up.

She’s in the bathroom, collecting her things, when she hears a noise by the door. She turns to see Baz, blinking at her blearily.

“Hi,” she says. “I’ve gotta go soon.”

“Me too.” He frowns. “Was that the radio?”

“No,” Dunn says. “That was me.”

Baz blinks a couple more times and then reaches a hand out to land on her shoulder, heavy with sleep. “You,” he says, “should’ve done karaoke last night. Would’ve blown everyone else out of the water.”

Dunn laughs. “Next time?”

“Next time,” Basilio agrees. He squeezes her shoulder and then wanders back into the hotel room.

Dunn waits a minute. But eventually she starts humming again. It’s just as tuneless, but it’s a little louder now. More purposeful.

**Author's Note:**

> [it's been a slow, slow march](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LY_F8EHWgQ) / waiting for the flowers to bloom / it's been a slow, slow start / but i know i could be somebody new
> 
> find me on Tumblr/Twitter @waveridden and become my new best friend by asking about the copious number of Picrews of Dunn/Baz that I've created


End file.
